AP Psychology - Unit 5: Learning and Classical Conditioning

Behaviorism (Behavioral Perspective)

the view that psychology should be an objective science that studies behavior without reference to mental processes. Most modern psychologists agree with the first part and not with the second part

Taste Aversion

a behavior that John Garcia found rats to exhibit, involving a food that the rats will not eat because it makes them ill. This behavior persists even if a nauseating drug is given to the rats hours after the food is given to them.

Higher Order Conditioning (Secondary Conditioning)

a procedure in which the conditioned stimulus in one conditioning experience is paired with a new neutral stimulus, creating a new (often weaker) conditioned stimulus.

Learning

a relatively permanent behavioral change due to experience

Biological Preparedness

an innate tendency to learn certain types of associations relatively easily (helps explain taste aversion)

Delayed Conditioning

an acquisition trial of classical conditioning that occurs when the unconditioned stimulus follows immediately after the conditioned stimulus, with a brief overlap of the two. Known to be the most effective conditioning schedule

Simultaneous conditioning

an acquisition trial of classical conditioning that occurs when the unconditioned stimulus is presented at the same time as the conditioned stimulus (this may or may not work, since the animal is generally distracted by the unconditioned stimulus)

Backward conditioning

an acquisition trial of classical conditioning that occurs when the unconditioned stimulus is presented before the conditioned stimulus (conditioning does not work, since the animal is too distracted by the conditioned stimulus to make the association)

Trace Conditioning

an acquisition trial of classical conditioning that occurs when the unconditioned stimulus is presented hours after the conditioned stimulus. Can be effective sometimes (taste aversion)

Habituation

an organism's decreasing response to a stimulus with repeated exposure to it

Little Albert

an unethical conditioning experiment conducted by John Watson on a human infant, in which the fear of furry textures is instilled in the child.

Neutral Stimulus

in classical conditioning, a stimulus that has not been associated with the response

Unconditioned Stimulus

in classical conditioning, a stimulus that triggers a natural and automatic response.

Conditioned Stimulus

in classical conditioning, an originally irrelevant stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus, comes to trigger a conditioned response.

Conditioned Response

in classical conditioning, the learned response to a previously neutral stimulus

Unconditioned Response

in classical conditioning, the unlearned, naturally occurring response to the unconditioned stimulus, such as salivation when food is in the mouth.

Associative Learning

learning that certain events occur together. The events may be two stimuli (as in classical conditioning) or a response and its consequences (as in operant conditioning)

Continuity Model

one of Pavlov's theories that stated that the unconditioned stimulus had to follow immediately after the conditioned stimulus for the animal to anticipate, and that the learning of the association between pairings is dependent on the number of times that the pairings occur.

Contingency Model

one of Rescorla's theories stated that conditioning is contingent on the animal's cognitive processing of the event as well as pairings between the conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus

Acquisition

one of the five major conditioning processes - in classical conditioning, the initial stage, when one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus bebing triggering the conditioned response; in operant conditioning, the strengthening of a reinforced response

Discrimination

one of the five major conditioning processes - in classical conditioning, the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus.

Extinction

one of the five major conditioning processes - the diminishing of a conditioned response; occurs in classical conditioning when an unconditioned stimulus does not follow a conditioned stimulus; occurs in operant conditioning when a response is no longer reinforced

Spontaneous Recovery

one of the five major conditioning processes - the reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response.

Generalization

one of the five major conditioning processes - the tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses

Observational Learning

one of the main forms of learning - learning new behaviors from others' experiences

Conditioning

one of the main forms of learning - the process of learning associations

Learned Helplessness

the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.

John Garcia

the person who first found out about trace conditioning and taste aversion in rats

Robert Rescorla

the person who proved that cognition does play a role in conditioning by studying how rats can predict an event based on their past experience with a stimulus

Ivan Pavlov

the person whose early twentieth century experiments explore the phenomena we call classical conditioning

John Watson

the scientist who conducted the Little Albert experiment

Operant Conditioning

we learn to associate a response (our behavior) with its consequence, and thus repeat acts followed by good results and avoid acts followed by bad results.

Classical Conditioning

we learn to associate two stimuli and thus anticipate events (we learn that a flash of lightning signals an impending crack of thunder, so when lightning flashes nearby, we start to brace ourselves for the subsequent thunder)